Ten Thousand Saints Page 0,10

place in New Jersey that agreed to consider her application for the spring semester (no doubt for an increased fee). To the first question in the essay section—What are your personal goals for the future?—she had responded with 250 words about her ambition to become a makeup artist, written in eyeliner and beginning with “My personal goals for the future, as opposed to my personal goals for the past . . .”

While Les had applauded her creativity, her mother had tossed the essay in the trash compactor and sat down at the Macintosh computer that looked like an object from a spaceship in the ancient opulence of their apartment, the Oriental rugs and pewter ashtrays and crystal chandeliers, and proceeded to respond to the second prompt: Describe a person who has had a dramatic impact on your life. “The person who has made me what I am today,” she read aloud, her manicured nails typing clickety-clack, “is my mother.”

If Eliza had been forced to respond to the question herself, she would have written about Les. Her dad, an in-house counsel at a downtown brokerage, had died of a cerebral aneurysm when she was three, but by the time she was ten her mom had had the good sense to meet Les and keep him around. Les was the best thing about her mom. He was moody and lazy and seriously stubborn and he went days sometimes without showering, but from time to time he got her mom high, which was what she really needed, and he had this you’re-on-my-team respect for Eliza that continually surprised her. He’d let her paint his toenails. He’d let her crash on his futon in the East Village when she fought with her mom. He knew all the vegetables she didn’t like, and he’d tweeze them out of her stir-fry with a pair of chopsticks.

It was strange, then, wasn’t it, that he paid his own children so little attention. In the only picture Les had of them, they were toddlers in a bathtub, their hair sculpted into soapy Mohawks. These were the babies he had deserted, orphans, really. And one of them a true orphan, adopted at birth, from her own New York. “What are their names again?” she occasionally asked him, even though she knew, just to hear him say them. Now he would say “Dick and Jane” or “Simon and Garfunkel.” She wondered, as the Amtrak sighed to a halt in Lintonburg, what they knew of her.

Out on the cold platform, the world was white, even in the heavy dark. The snow had stopped. On the other side of the tracks, a wilderness of cars, frozen in the lot over the winter holiday, lay buried under it. No one was around except for two boys, lurking a few cars down—that darkly dressed, alley-dwelling species of boy you could depend on for directions if you dared ask. She was about to do so—she was a city girl, not easily afraid—when one of them called her name. She must have nodded, or waved. Here they came, trotting over, cigarette smoke trailing behind. “Hey.” They stopped at a safe distance, nodded their heads. “Are you Eliza?”

Two boys: she had not expected this. There was a black-haired one and a red-haired one, whom she deemed to be Jude. She had composed a picture in her head, an accelerated version of the children in the tub, but now, in front of these real-life faces, it dissolved. She snapped off her Walkman, slipped her headphones from her ears, and let them fall around her neck. “That’s my friend Teddy,” said the redhead. “I’m Jude.”

“Jude,” said Eliza. His eyelids were heavy. Was he high? Then, raising her voice over the roar of the train roaring away, “Hi, but I thought I was meeting a girl, too? Prudence?”

“She had plans,” said Jude, who was smiling painfully. “Plus, she’s sort of young for her age. How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“So’s Prudence. I’m sixteen.”

“It’s his birthday.”

“On New Year’s Eve?” Eliza asked doubtfully.

“I didn’t ask to be born then. I just was.”

“Are you getting your license?”

“No. My mom doesn’t have a car.”

“Oh.” Eliza adjusted her backpack. “Well, happy birthday.”

“You don’t have any stuff?” Teddy, the dark-haired one, asked.

“Just this.” The rest of the bags she’d taken to Stowe had gone home on the plane with her friends, who were spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square, she explained. “Fucking last place on earth I’d want to be tonight.”

“You haven’t seen Lintonburg yet,” mumbled Teddy.

“We’re going